


These Ghosts In His Mind

by red_at_three (elle_stone)



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Ghosts, Halloween, M/M, New Vulcan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-29
Updated: 2018-01-29
Packaged: 2019-03-10 22:03:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13510671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elle_stone/pseuds/red_at_three
Summary: Stranded on New Vulcan, Jim and Spock explore the planet and find evidence of its past inhabitants. Also published in Issue 2 of This Simple Feeling.





	These Ghosts In His Mind

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the [October 2017 issue](http://thissimplefanzine.tumblr.com/post/165609975690/pre-order-your-copy-of-issue-2-now-pre-orders) of [This Simple Feeling](http://thissimplefanzine.tumblr.com/), for the theme Halloween.

Even in pictures, New Vulcan is beautiful. Existing for him now only on the tiny screen of the computer in his quarters, it is still marvelous and unexpected, equal parts lush and severe. Jim has always pictured the desert as desolate and uniform, punctuated only by cacti and windblown tumbleweeds. Here instead he sees craggy mountain peaks, cut in almost vertical lines and colored a rich palette of brown and yellow and gold, arching over a carpet of diverse vegetation: sturdy desert flowers of purple and blue, tangled jade-green bushes, hardy thin-limbed trees.

He wants to ask Spock if it looks like home, but he already knows. Without having ever seen Vulcan in person, he knows. It cannot be. If someone gave him a copy of Iowa, with its weather and its atmosphere and its most defining features, broadly sketched, he'd know the difference right away. He'd spot an imitator through instinct if not thought, perhaps with a subtle rising of the hairs on the back of his neck, or in a sudden unexplained breathlessness upon first view.

After a few minutes, he closes out of the collection of pictures and turns instead to the report: eighty-three extensive Starfleet-speak pages documenting everything there is to know about the empty planet, now to be claimed by the Federation and designated New Vulcan. Size, atmosphere, flora, fauna, climate. No signs of habitation. Even after thorough and extensive tests, no signs of native populations beyond its animals and plants.

It's this section that Jim has returned to again and again in the last week. In his experience, still limited, as a starship Captain, he's learned that planets that can sustain life usually do. Sometimes only in the past. Sometimes in waves. Sometimes life in unexpected forms, life that cannot be predicted by science or detected by traditional instruments. Shapeshifting life. Robotic life. Life in the form of minds without bodies, or auras without shape.

Still, this report was compiled by the person in the universe he trusts most, and so deeply it often disconcerts him. His faith in Ambassador Spock is both hard-earned and fully-formed, created over years in another life and then imported directly into his own, deep and true and complete. So he closes the file and tells his computer to sleep. It's what he should be doing himself. In less than eight hours they will enter the orbit of New Vulcan and beam down.

*

Dwarfed by a mountain range of impossible size, a small village of tents and temporary buildings has risen from the sand and dust. It houses Starfleet officials, Council members, scientists, contractors, and builders, some Vulcan, many alien, all ready and eager to welcome their guests. After a few hours of official meetings and tours, Jim has started to get a sense of the new, still-budding community. The vanguard lives a rough life here and even the Vulcan faces show it. But they are undaunted. When they pull up their architectural plans and show him the city they will build here in this valley, the food they will grow, the new Temple they’ll build, the Council chambers, the school, the gardens, he feels an optimism infuse the whole room. It almost makes him forget the way the sharp points of mountain peaks loom above them or the hard whistle of the wind outside, the way the sky has turned a premature gray.

Before dinner, the rest of the landing party escorts the planet’s small population back to the Enterprise for a formal dinner, the sort that will require dress uniforms for the members of the crew in attendance. Only Jim and Spock hold back. Jim has his reasons—partly, he'd like to avoid the stiff collar of his dress shirt a little longer, though something else, a curiosity he can't pin down, holds him back as well—and he's sure that Spock has his. Reasons even harder to describe or understand.

They're standing at the edge of the campsite, the cozy collection of close-set buildings and tents behind them, ahead only the untamed desert wilderness stretching out to the horizon. The sun has been obscured by thick, dark clouds, and the wind, when it gusts past them, is cool and harsh and rings in the ears. Jim shivers. He'd known the temperature would drop when evening fell, but he didn't expect the change to be so sudden or to come so soon.

He stares out ahead, cataloging every rustle of bare tree limbs and every flutter of flower petals and a distant sound, like the cawing of a crow, that seems to have been stirred up by the wind itself, and it occurs to him that he and Spock are the only two people on this entire planet. And a well of loneliness rises up in him.

The only two people alive in the whole world.

Out of the corner of his eye, a bright shard of light flashes. He turns to it. Again. This time, it's clear: a fork of lightning splitting itself across the smudged gray sky.

"Mr. Spock?" He doesn't bother to turn, but sends the question back over his shoulder, his ears attuned to the possibility of thunder and his body tense against the wind blowing sand around his feet. "Do you think a storm might be coming?"

A crunch of boots behind him, and Spock's voice, close by: "Likely."

"That's all? 'Likely'?"

Jim shoots a look back at him. Spock's holding his tricorder in his hands, but he's watching the sky, as if making his judgement from no more than the movement of the clouds. "Ninety-six percent chance that we will experience a storm within the next hour."

Jim doesn't answer, but sighs, low and quiet.

"Do you dislike storms, Captain?"

"No. But the transporter does. Lightning especially." He tilts his head all the way back, as if searching out his ship somewhere in the infinite sky. "Mr. Spock, I think we're stuck."

*

Jim contacts Scotty to let him know they won't be risking transporting up tonight, while Spock makes a simple dinner with the colony's supplies. After they eat, and without discussion, they set out to explore the rest of the valley.

"This is unwise, Captain," Spock notes, only after a half hour’s walk has all but erased the colony from view. "It is quite likely that we will be caught outside in a severe thunderstorm."

"Are you suggesting we turn back?" Jim asks. He does not point out that Spock could have made this argument before they left, because he knows this official airing of concern is to maintain his reputation only. Even when they are alone, Spock still seems to care immensely about his reputation.

"No," he answers. "I am merely pointing out that it is unwise."

As they approach the mountains, the terrain becomes more arduous, and Jim starts to feel a whisper of dizziness as he breathes in the thin air. The planet's temperature is warmer than what he’s used to, though dropping now quickly without the heat of the sun, and something heavy hangs in the atmosphere like a warning or a prophecy. He tries to conjure up a name for it as a he crouches down by one of the flowers, counts its sixteen soft purple petals just before, at his touch, they all curl in. But he's tired and the sky rumbles above him, and he just can't be sure, anymore, about anything.

They have wandered, by now, all the way to base of the nearest mountain. In its shadow, the air is cold and sharp.

Jim looks up and sees Spock, head tilted back, staring transfixed at the mountainside. He gets up to his feet and dusts off his knees. "Have you made a new discovery, Mr. Spock?" he asks, and tries to smile, but by the time the question is out of his mouth, no answer is necessary, and his smile quickly fades. He can see now, what has so fascinated his First Officer: a set of steps, simply but perfectly carved, digging into the mountain slope and leading up to a wide set of double doors.

"I thought they hadn't started building permanent residences yet," Jim says, finally, after a long pause to let his understanding of this planet realign.

"Initial plans have been made," Spock corrects.

"I know. I thought 'initial plans' meant the simulations and architectural drawings Suhur was showing us this morning."

Spock inclines his head, holds his tricorder up but only glances down at its readings. Then he admits, "So did I."

Jim leads the way up the steps, taking them slowly, as if afraid they might crumble under his feet. Hardly possible: they are sturdy, cut deep into the mountainside, deliberately made and yet one with the landscape itself. The door opens with one decisive push. He feels its weight beneath his palm, solid and real, hears the sweep of it against the floor as it falls back, and feels somehow, irrationally, assured.

Inside, a wide, horizontal hall stretches to either side. The floor is polished red stone. One staircase leads down to the left, another up to the right.

"I wouldn't call any of this 'initial,'" Jim notes, just as, behind them and clearly audible through the open door, another boom of thunder sounds and a thin sheet of rain descends.

*

Jim explores downstairs while Spock heads up. The stairs lead immediately into a square living space, with several angular chairs and a long, sand-yellow sofa. An abstract landscape painting hangs on the wall to the left, and there are several tall silver sculptures—sharp angles and circles in pleasing but inscrutable shapes—clustered in the corners and near the walls. The room looks well-lived in, comfortable, almost soft despite the uneven rock walls and dim light, and for this reason all the more lonesome. Jim runs his fingers gently over the curved back of one of the chairs. It cannot possibly be old. And yet—it is even less possible that any of this could be new.

Through a door he finds a narrow but well-stocked kitchen, crowded with a large table and a few too many chairs, utensils and dishes and cookware on the open shelves and hanging from hooks on the wall. As in the living room, several torches, already lit, throw light across the space. Even more impossible. A small voice in his mind wonders if perhaps he's lost track of his senses entirely. He knows well enough that not everything one sees can be trusted. But also that the fantastic is not always an illusion, and illusions are not always lies.

A large family must have lived here, he thinks—not the colonists, clearly, but someone else. There are so many chairs and so many plates. He can easily imagine them, not what they might have looked like, but the feel of them, the warmth of them, gathering here for long dinners or conversations late at night. The living room was mostly for show. This room was their heart, where they relaxed, where they were themselves. Their unknowable, mysterious, long lost selves.

He supposes it's possible that they are not lost. That whoever they are, they'll be back. Maybe even tonight. Yet somehow this thought fills him with no fear. He comes, as ever, in peace and friendship, and some inchoate sense tells him that he would be welcomed, his overtures returned.

He sits down at the table and tries to picture them. Humanoids, most likely: the furniture fits his rough size and shape and the utensils are similar to his own race's spoons and forks. Beyond that—he closes his eyes as if, somehow, this might help him conjure an image of these ghosts in his mind. But—

A rush of wind, as fierce as the storm wind outside, blows through. At first he's sure he's only heard it. Then he recognizes a shiver rattling up his spine, and hears the loud, startling bang of the door slamming shut. And he opens his eyes.

He's still alone. No one else in the room with him, nothing changed. Except that on the corner of the table, right in front of him, the words _we were here_ have been delicately and precisely left behind.

*

Spock is upstairs in one of the bedrooms, sitting on the edge of a large, low bed that dominates the room. The rest of the space is taken up primarily by a variety of potted desert plants. He's staring down at his tricorder, or possibly his boots, but he looks up and sits up straighter when he hears Jim at the door.

"Report, Mr. Spock?" Jim asks. He says the words with the lightness of a joke, a tone that doesn’t quite match the atmosphere of the room, because he's already determined that there is little his Science Officer could possibly tell him about the situation they’re in.

Still, Spock answers dutifully. "According to all of my readings, Captain, we are inside the mountain."

"Yes," Jim nods along. "Because this house is cut into the mountain."

"No, you misunderstand. There is no indication that this dwelling or any of these objects exist. These plants are not alive. There is nothing here. We are _inside_ the rock itself."

Jim raises his eyebrows as if this were a great shock. In truth, it isn't. He'd already guessed something similar himself. With a soft, understanding sigh, lacking in urgency, he sits down next to Spock, his elbows on his knees. "What is your hypothesis, then? Illusion? Trick?"

Spock shakes his head. "I don't think those words adequately describe what we are seeing."

"Mmm." Jim looks around again, taking in a tall, man-sized cactus-type plant growing next to the door. It looks so remarkably real. He's sure if he touched it, it would prick him and he would bleed. But more than the lifelike quality of the furniture, the floors, the walls—all of which could easily be facsimile, of the realistic sort he’s encountered before—it is the air of the place, the sensations that follow and suffuse him, that inspire him to search out a different explanation.

"Yes,” he says, “I agree. I think we're seeing something else entirely."

He glances at Spock, catches his eye, and knows from some shadow that crosses his face that they have come, through their own investigations, to the same silent conclusion. Just in case, he ventures, "Something unusual did happen when I was downstairs. A gust of wind blew through, and after it left I noticed words carved into the table where I was sitting. _We were here_. In English, as if it, whatever _it_ is, wanted me, specifically, to get the message."

Spock tilts his head, curious. "Yes. Something similar happened to me. Except that the words were written on the headboard of this bed and they were in Vulcan."

The words _we were here_. They echo again in Jim’s head. _We **were** here._ But not anymore. What surrounds them now, in the form of furniture, art, floors and walls and ceilings, might be a message, or a window onto the past, or a remnant of something—memory? consciousness?—left behind after an uncountable, unknowable number of years.

"What do you think happened to them?" Jim asks. His voice is quiet, hushed out of respect and uncertainty.

He expects Spock to answer that he does not have enough data or that he cannot speculate with so little evidence, but instead he answers, without hesitation: "Something terrible."

Maybe this is a conclusion, scientific in itself, drawn from observation beyond Jim's human senses. Maybe these beings were, in some way, distant relatives of Spock’s, and as a Vulcan he can reach out to them along a psychic line that Jim cannot understand. Still, he has his own innate sense about this place. Everything he's felt here has been warm, comforting, even welcoming. He's sensed no pain or anguish here.

And yet: they are gone. And what race has ever died off peacefully? What beings would ever abandon their home without sorrow?

If Spock has a greater innate understanding of this planet's history, it is because of his own experience. His answer comes from within himself. Seeing this finally and with painful regret of his own, Jim holds out two fingers. He waits for Spock to return the gesture, pressing fingertips to fingertips. Jim's still new to this, but he's starting to get used to the sensations of comfort and warmth Spock sends him. Enough so to attempt to send them back to him.

He moves a little closer, so their shoulders touch, and Spock leans into him.

Outside, the rain is still falling, muted by the thick rock walls. Steady, echoing, downpours of rain.

"Do Vulcans believe in ghosts?"

In the almost-silence, he's decided just to call this haunting what it is.

Spock hesitates. Jim's noticed this expression before, learned this particular tension in his hands: the frustration of having to explain a thought in words; of not being able to communicate, because of Jim's human limits, in pure sensation and thought. "No," he says finally. "Not like humans do."

 _Some humans_ , Jim considers saying, but doesn't. His own beliefs have been shaken and upset by the evidence of his own senses: he cannot talk about what human beings believe.

"We do have a concept," Spock continues, "called the _katra_. I think the closest translation would be 'the soul.' It is...the essence of a person. What exists beyond memory or personality or physical being. It can be transferred outside of the body. But it cannot survive without a vessel. It does not live in the atmosphere like your _ghosts_ do."

“So,” Jim asks hesitantly, “what happens to a Vulcan’s _katra_ when he dies?”

Spock does not answer for such a long time that Jim starts to wonder if he only imagined himself asking the question, or if his words, or Spock’s, were lost in the distant rumbles of thunder that still sound, or in the steady rhythm of the rain. Then finally, he feels Spock’s fingers press with unexpected urgency against his own, and a riot of emotion pass from skin to skin. Confusion, grief, yearning, frustration, anger, streaks of hope.

“I have thought about that question for a long time,” he murmurs, voice shaking, all but inaudible. “And I do not know.”

*

Later, they fall asleep under the blankets of the too-wide bed, curled together in the middle, waiting for the storm to end.

In the morning, they are outside, at the mountain’s base; the sun shines clear above them and the branch of a low-set leafless bush pokes into Jim’s ear. He sits up slowly. Even this early, it’s nearly unbearably hot for him and his forehead is beaded with sweat. He wakes Spock and they stand, stretch out their limbs, shake the dust and sand from their clothes.

The steps are gone, there is no door, and the mountainside is nothing but solid rock. But then, what else could it be?

Jim pulls out his communicator and flips it open. “Scotty? Kirk here. It looks like the storm has passed.” He looks up again: the endless blue of the sky and his ship, waiting for them. “Two to beam up.”


End file.
